No Hardware Anti-Aliasing under DirectX 11?

[Illya]

You guys...

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...caling-options

The UI in this game does not scale. What is actually happening is the devs are creating fixed size steps of different UI elements. There are only a few of these steps, and it's really hard to get more because the devs are sitting there creating them one by one for every UI element in this game. Squenix for some reason uses fixed pixel bitmaps for all overlay UI elements in this game. That's why the UI isn't freely scalable or resizable.

This is why the UI in the game is so random, some things have different steps you can choose, but other things like the NPC dialogue bubbles and the nameplates over players and NPCs *NEVER* scale. Above 1080p and player names become microscopic on the screen. Most UI elements which can be resized go up to 140% which might be barely enough for 1440p. There is no UI size large enough for 4K resolution period.

[Ladon]

You guys...

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...caling-options

The UI in this game does not scale. What is actually happening is the devs are creating fixed size steps of different UI elements. There are only a few of these steps, and it's really hard to get more because the devs are sitting there creating them one by one for every UI element in this game. Squenix for some reason uses fixed pixel bitmaps for all overlay UI elements in this game. That's why the UI isn't freely scalable or resizable.

This is why the UI in the game is so random, some things have different steps you can choose, but other things like the NPC dialogue bubbles and the nameplates over players and NPCs *NEVER* scale. Above 1080p and player names become microscopic on the screen. Most UI elements which can be resized go up to 140% which might be barely enough for 1440p. There is no UI size large enough for 4K resolution period.

Oh, I understand you now.

Yeah nameplates aren't UI elements (from a technical perspective), they are actually just flat textured surfaces so they aren't going to scale unless they create a new set of assets that kick in after the game is set over a certain resolution.

And yeah the actual UI is LUA and it likely uses fixed steps since at one point they wanted to open up the UI to modding (is this actually ever going to happen?). I'm guessing they couldn't really vectorize the UI to allow for true scaling because then modding would end up too programmable.

They really do need to add a 200% scaling step for 4k resolutions though. But as you mentioned, 140% should keep you good at 1440p and for supersampling you really don't need more than 50% scaling for good results so 1080p and 1200p users should be fine, but it's going to be an issue if your base resolution is any higher.

[Furyhunter]

Hardware anti-aliasing doesn't work in deferred shading. FFXIV uses deferred shading to make dynamic lighting very inexpensive and scale well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_shading

"One more rather important disadvantage is that, due to separating the lighting stage from the geometric stage, hardware anti-aliasing does not produce correct results anymore since interpolated subsamples would result in nonsensical position, normal, and tangent attributes."

MSAA and family are not options because the renderer does not allow for it.

[KisaiTenshi]

Only for a console user, PC users have enjoyed high resolution for years now beyond that of 1920x1080.

How many years have the likes of 2560x1440 monitors been in existence?

And if you enjoyed the opportunity to downsample from a higher resolution, you will notice a increase in visual fidelity, the very reason some of us who spent money on the likes of a Nvidia 780 could enjoy, why spend money on something like that and stick to stone age settings?

Most/all 23" monitors are 1920x1080 and most 24" monitors are 1920x1200 (I have one of each.) Players with 27" monitors and 4K monitors(typically wider than HDTV) are SOL.

I have a friend who plays games on his 4K monitor and lots of games just completely have a spaz with it. The inherent problem with LCD screens is that all resolutions but the native resolution look like garbage, because the monitor's upscaling algorithm is meant for speed, not quality. I'd rather have a nearest-neighbor 2:1 scale than a bicubic blurfest.

Hardware anti-aliasing doesn't work in deferred shading. FFXIV uses deferred shading to make dynamic lighting very inexpensive and scale well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_shading

"One more rather important disadvantage is that, due to separating the lighting stage from the geometric stage, hardware anti-aliasing does not produce correct results anymore since interpolated subsamples would result in nonsensical position, normal, and tangent attributes."

MSAA and family are not options because the renderer does not allow for it.

They could still do SSAA/FSAA supersampling, which is what "hardware antialiasing" was back a decade ago before lower quality MSAA took the crown. But to do so requires having the GPU computational scale, which just doesn't exist in any GPU on the market.

eg to do 2X SSAA/FSAA, you need to render 1920x1080 at 3840x2160, which only the top tier cards can do. If you have a 4K monitor then you have to render at 8K (7680 x 4320) which no single GPU can do.

[raelgun]

Most/all 23" monitors are 1920x1080 and most 24" monitors are 1920x1200 (I have one of each.) Players with 27" monitors and 4K monitors(typically wider than HDTV) are SOL.

1920x1080 is a thing of the past, especially with modern hardware, people with good hardware should be encouraged to use high resolution.

If you find the sweetspot, you don't actually get any blurring, only at the extreme end.

My native resolution is 2560x1080 21:9, something FF14 does very well actually, however there are jaggies with it, playing at 2944x1242 provides a much cleaner picture and more detail.

And if you are wondering, I still sustain 60 FPS (limited to) and no need to use FXAA which needs to burn in hell.

[Coolit]

I am also disappointed as FXAA is terrible looking and I expected better AA options in the DX11 client.

Warcraft has recently moved to a deferred lighting engine and they were able to offer a load of better AA options including, FXAA Low, FXAA High, CMAA, MSAA 2x, MSAA 4x, MSAA 8x, SSAA 2x, SSAA 2x + CMAA so I don't see any reason why FFXIV cant.

[raelgun]

I am also disappointed as FXAA is terrible looking and I expected better AA options in the DX11 client.

Warcraft has recently moved to a deferred lighting engine and they were able to offer a load of better AA options including, FXAA Low, FXAA High, CMAA, MSAA 2x, MSAA 4x, MSAA 8x, SSAA 2x, SSAA 2x + CMAA so I don't see any reason why FFXIV cant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm_8ag7oPs0

[Darkshade]

Guys stop arguing. The point of the thread is we want hardware AA, and clearly WoW's able to do it, and this is a WoW clone so where is the MSAA yoshi? yoshi where is it?

[hikariinu124]

Guys stop arguing. The point of the thread is we want hardware AA, and clearly WoW's able to do it, and this is a WoW clone so where is the MSAA yoshi? yoshi where is it?

I completely agree, honestly Blizz get a lot of crap but the fact they've pulled off so many AA options on an old engine really is incredible.

Meanwhile, we've waited ages on a DX11 client that doesn't fix the one thing most people cared about.

[Kule]

I completely agree, honestly Blizz get a lot of crap but the fact they've pulled off so many AA options on an old engine really is incredible.

Meanwhile, we've waited ages on a DX11 client that doesn't fix the one thing most people cared about.

Exactly this, One of the main reasons everyone originally asked for DX11 wasn't for waxed floors but for actual decent anti aliasing that doesn't make you feel like you forgot to put your glasses on.